FCAN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Submission

The Family Court Accountability Network (FCAN) was formed in 2025 by five survivor-leaders who came together with a single purpose: to ensure Australia could no longer hide the truth of what is happening to women and children inside the Family Court.

Together, we worked around the clock to prepare Australia’s grassroots, survivor-led submission to the United Nations for the 4th Cycle Universal Periodic Review, documenting systemic human-rights breaches, unsafe orders, gender bias, economic abuse, and court-enabled violence.

Although we missed the official UN deadline by only a few weeks, the work was so substantial, so evidence-heavy and so urgent, that it has now been logged as a formal human rights complaint.

In October 2025, we submitted our letter to the Attorney-General requesting that the Magellan findings and survivor-led solutions be incorporated into Australia’s final National Report.The response was yet another standardised brush-off, another addition to the ever-growing “nothing to see here” file survivors know too well.

But this submission stands. It documents what Australia refused to include. It makes visible what our courts continue to hide.

Writing it was retraumatising, heavy, and often overwhelming - but necessary. FCAN exists because the women and children failed by this system deserve truth, accountability, and change, and because survivors should never again be erased from Australia’s human-rights reporting.